CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams on Tuesday expressed shock after the Trump Department of Justice interfered to get corruption charges dropped against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
In reacting to prosecutors' decision to drop the case, Williams argued that this went far beyond any of the controversial pardons that Trump has made in the past.
"In my six years at the Justice Department, I never once saw headquarters write a memo to a local prosecutor's office telling them to drop a case," said Williams. "It doesn't happen. I haven't seen Republicans do it. I haven't seen Democrats do it."
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Williams said that this was particularly extraordinary because the DOJ had only just recently filed additional evidence that they had discovered against Adams, which suggests that the facts of the case were even stronger than what had been laid out in the original indictment.
"It does not smell right," he said. "It doesn't look good. And this is even more than some of the other cases we've seen, just a use of power from Washington when it comes to local prosecutions. It just shouldn't happen."
Adams in recent months had made pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago and there has been speculation that he offered to fully cooperate with Trump's mass deportation plans in his city in exchange for having his case dropped.
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